Getting Weird in Canada
Last Friday, we were joined by Marie LeBlanc Flanagan, Executive Director of WeirdCanada.com and Wyrd Arts Initiatives, which is a non-profit dedicated to encouraging, documenting, and connecting creative expression across Canada. She generously shared with us how she helped to revolutionized the arts and music website.
When Marie landed at Weird Canada, it was a tiny music blog with a few writers, a few posts a week, and a vision to celebrate underrepresented Canadian music. It was one blog in the sea of a million blogs.
But like so many bright ideas before, one year into its birth, Weird Canada hit a wall: energy turned into excuses, missed deadlines, and faltering morale. They weren't dying from lack of need. In fact, the DIY and emerging music community in Canada was thriving. MySpace had launched millions of tiny bedroom and garage bands out into the world, but no one was really listening.
And so there it was: a tiny blog made up of music nerds, struggling to find the energy and time at the end of a long day to write a blog post. Musicians loved it but it seemed like no one else cared. Then something funny happened.
Someone nominated Weird Canada as CBC R3’s “best music website in Canada.” They were on the end of a very long list, and stood virtually no chance against the other blogs also on the list, which included Exclaim, Joel Plaskett's blog, Matthew Goode's blog, Disorder magazine, and other Goliaths. It was a seemingly impossible challenge. So they decided to give it their all.
They reached out to every friend Weird Canada had. They said: “We want to win this thing. We don't have a chance. Will you help us?” And though all these DIY artists and communities were tiny, when banding together they turned into an unstoppable army. All these tiny communities heard the calling and they shouted back: YES.
And then something amazing happened: They won.
In that moment they realized they were at a pivotal moment: Step-up and make something happen, or step back and let the communities fracture and fragment back into geographical division.
So they started listening. They opened their doors and asked people what they wanted and what they needed, and drew an enormous map of everything that their community wanted them to be. This Marie turned into a mandate, a dream, and a list of 35 objectives.
Immediately after finalizing the objectives they got started realizing them. Marie incorporated Weird Canada as a national not-for-profit in the Fall, and have (with the support of a volunteer army) been steadily working on achieving their list of dreams.
Through their mandate, they’ve accomplished many of their goals, and below is a list of five key learnings that Marie offered on how to make your community more accessible:
Define your community and communicate your intent to be accessible Not everyone belongs in every space. This isn’t a conversation about how everyone should be everywhere all the time. What is needed is an ongoing and thoughtful conversation about inclusivity, and an awareness of community boundaries and barriers.
Identify Barriers Develop a barrier-based mentality, where you identify barriers and treat them with respect, no matter how small they look. List some things that might prevent people from getting into spaces. And if you are having a hard time with brainstorming, just look around to see who is missing.
Look for Gaps Who is in your space? Who is not? Make a list, and then systematically go through it. You can be certain that if there are certain demographics missing from your community, it is because there are barriers in place. You need to go to the missing people, don’t wait for them to come to you. Don’t be weird about it, just ask what they think about your space. Note: It can feel a bit scary to ask our communities the important question: “who is missing, here?” People will get defensive and angry, no matter how you ask them. The anger is a good thing. It means you are poking in the right direction.
Communicate your intent to be accessible Tell people what you are doing. This will open you up to all kinds of criticism. Other people will notice your mistakes. This is a good thing.
Break down unwanted barriers. Iterate. Iterate. Iterate. Once you have identified the missing groups, try to take down or bridge those barriers, then reach out to the missing communities. You will need to iterate through your solutions. Sometimes you will think you have removed all the barriers, and still people won’t come. Try again. Ask questions, but try not to tokenize the people who do come. Don’t ask them to be representatives of an entire missing community. Create anonymous forums for feedback. Finally, understand how important this work is. Prioritize it.
